


On Virtue

by newsbypostcard



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M, Love Triangle, Unrequited Love, unrequited shepard/garrus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-23
Updated: 2014-02-23
Packaged: 2018-01-13 11:56:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1225426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/newsbypostcard/pseuds/newsbypostcard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He knows he’s out of his fucking mind to hope for her to say anything about last night to him ever again. They both know why they’re here. Saren has to go down and they’re going to take him out at all costs, and he signed on willingly knowing that he was part of that cost -- and so did she. They both signed on to their own deaths the second they leaned into each other last night -- and that’s the only reason why it happened. It would never work, if they lived. They’d held out for months, intentionally and for good reason. Rank. Fraternization. Command. A soldier has to focus on covering his CO’s back rather than staring at her backside, and he <em>definitely</em> can’t just fucking <em>sit down</em> when those waves of, like, fucking whatever start crashing at him.</p><p>He is a grown-ass man. He’s in his god damned thirties. And he’s acting like a fucking teenager who can’t get a grasp on his hormones.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On Virtue

**Author's Note:**

> Spoils the end of the game. Begins on Ilos and finishes after the battle at Citadel. My Shep is Sole Survivor and mostly Paragon, with the occasional firmly Renegade impulse. Accordingly she likes her space and doesn’t always know how to communicate feelings! Also, you know how it sucks when female characters are stuck in love triangles? Well I did that exact thing. It's kind of my jam. I am sorry.

There is something particular, he realizes, in the way Shepard’s shoulders drop after the last enemy is down. It’s slight, just barely a release of tension, enough to keep her shoulders from knotting up but not enough to let down her guard; and Kaidan’s stomach suddenly worms its way into knots.

 _Oh god_ , he thinks desperately, fighting to focus on the room. _Oh my god._

“Room is secure,” he says through a dry mouth -- but his voice is clear. Mostly.

Her shoulders drop another increment, and then she lets her weapon fall to the side, finger still stiff and ready at a moment’s notice. “You sure? I saw something back there.”

She inches forward around, peering around the crate, and Kaidan’s eyes drag over her armour. He catches on the curve of her hip, and some memory from the night prior suddenly floods him in technicolour. Fingers grazing over skin, a thumb tracing the line of her hipbone, the careless laugh she gives like they’re not walking down to their deaths in a matter of hours. _Oh my god,_ he thinks again, instinctively slapping a hand over his eyes. _Oh my god Alenko **focus** holy **shit** what is wrong with you._

“Radar says clear,” he reiterates primly, peering through his fingers, and clears his throat as he leans against the nearest crate.

She readies her weapon anyway, just up at first, and then secured in her other hand as she steps hesitantly around her cover; and now it’s the slant of her calf that’s got him, of all things, taut and ready to support a retreat as it stretches up to meet her--

Kaidan has to sit down.

“Guess you’re right,” she mutters, and turns back suddenly. “Can’t be too--”

He’s crouched in place with one hand secured on the ground, and this probably looks extremely awkward.

She pauses briefly, possibly to subdue a laugh. “Are you all right, Alenko?”

_You are a goddamned professional, Kaidan. Act! Natural!_

“Fine, Commander,” he gravels, staring at the ground. He hears the smirk rather than sees it. “I’m just. You know.” Does _he_ know? “...Resting.”

The unprofessional remark is on the tip of her tongue, and he loves that too, damnit. He wishes she’d just say it so that it was put into words, so that it was in the open and in front of them. He feels like he’s brimming over with the effort of keeping quiet, a kettle about to boil but for that last added element of heat, that final increment, taken out of her shoulders and into a biting comment about the fact that they had some better-than-mediocre life-affirming sex with one other in recent memory and that, hey, is that why he’s resting? Ha ha! That conversation they never had this morning sure would be well condensed into a one-liner about the sex they just had last night! Shepard’s surely going to offer that comment any second now! 

Yeah ... he’s an idiot. 

He knows he’s out of his fucking mind to hope for her to say anything about last night to him ever again. They both know why they’re here. Saren has to go down and they’re going to take him out at all costs, and he signed on willingly knowing that he was part of that cost -- and so did she. They both signed on to their own deaths the second they leaned into each other last night -- and that’s the only reason why it happened. It would never work, if they lived. They’d held out for months, intentionally and for good reason. Rank. Fraternization. Command. A soldier has to focus on covering his CO’s back rather than staring at her backside, and he _definitely_ can’t just fucking _sit down_ when those waves of, like, fucking whatever start crashing at him.

He is a grown-ass man. He’s in his god damned thirties. And he’s acting like a fucking teenager who can’t get a grasp on his hormones.

Yet still he waits for that comment dancing on the tip of Shepard’s tongue -- the one that tells him that, if they make it out of this -- on the extreme outside chance they manage to stop Saren, survive in the process, and not get wiped out by the Reapers -- he might have a shot.

Instead she says, “Hey, where’s Garrus?”

It’s a good thing he’s got a hand planted on the ground.

“I don’t know,” he replies, hollowly.

“Was he even fighting with us?”

“I--” He blinks suddenly and looks around. “I don’t … think so?”

Kaidan refocuses thanks to the faint dread settling over him and straightens to standing, watching the same feeling settle wordlessly over Shepard’s face. “He’s probably back at the Mako,” he offers, and Shepard nods primly, professionalism in full force.

“Better go find out,” she says, and nods him forward after her.

He wonders distantly if she would be this professional about it if he wandered off, too -- and then hates himself, emphatically.

\---  
\---

“Garrus? Garrus!”

Shepard calling his name is fucking _foolish_ , for one. Are they in geth-infested territory or not?

For another, it’s rude. He was trying to make sure the area was _absolutely clear_ , and here she was, interrupting.

“Shepard,” he says coolly as she approaches. “Are you trying to get us killed?”

She blinks at him, and he tries not to huff. “I’m sorry, who was it that didn’t show up to the fight back there?”

“I was busy,” he replies, “making sure no one was going to sneak up behind us.”

“When has that _ever happened_ , Garrus,” she counters. It’s not a question.

This is how it works with them: they respect each others’ discipline, until one of them deigns to question the integrity of the other. Neither of them means it; they just bicker about discipline because they each respect it in the other, and it entertains them to make fun of that which they admire.

But this has a biting edge to it Garrus isn’t used to, and he’s struggling not to bow his head with shame, because this time he actually did abandon his unit. He did it on purpose. And he did it in the most cowardly way possible.

It’s just … he can see it all over them that something has changed.

It was frankly appalling the way Alenko got so defensive about the mission. Yes, human, the drop is a suicide mission. The entire fucking endeavor is a suicide mission! That’s the sacrifice we make for the sake of universal security. Full tilt is the way you do it. That’s doing it right. And you sure as hell don’t start shouting about it like you’re surprised war involves sacrifice immediately before entering the field. 

Alenko was usually emotional, but that was its own little bit, and it was then that he should have first twigged that something was different.

But as it was, it took him until Alenko tripped over god knows what on his way out of the Mako and Shepard had laughed and helped him up. Garrus was providing cover and she not only let down her guard but _put down her weapon_ for the sake of helping that human squeegee figure out his own armour, and she did it not with exasperation, but with a _smile_. 

And not only _that,_ it was the sort of smile that gave a note of affection that he didn’t care for.

In fact, if he was honest, it made him feel sick.

It wasn’t that he disliked humans, as a rule. They were tense with him sometimes, on account of the war, and he was accordingly tense with them right back; but far more abhorrent than the squishy water bags that constituted humanity were those within his own kind who betrayed the very name ‘Turian’, and he was altogether too happy to accompany a couple of humans along to kill Saren if that’s what it took to right the universe again.

Frankly, in many respects, he even actively liked humans. He did if they were like Shepard, anyway: focused, committed, purposeful. She was happy to work with him, and as such, he was perfectly happy to work with her. And Alenko wasn’t bad, either; usually competent, nonjudgmental, easy to get along with.

It’s just that humanity as a species was, clearly, as drippy and tragic as ever.

And it hadn’t stopped at the tripping out of the damned vehicle, either. They’d started _crooning_ at each other, in the way that humans do when they think no one else is around. Quiet conversations they thought he couldn’t overhear followed; a muttered statement, an errant flutter of amusement, Shepard glancing her hand off Alenko’s flank, and fuck, no, did he ever not need to endure any more of _that_.

And so, given their apparent ignorance to his presence, this _committed_ member of the team -- who was actually targeting the geth with his weapon like he was _supposed_ to instead of nattering on about whether or not Can’tden’s armour had been displaced by his patent inability to get out of a vehicle -- had held back as they went ahead, watching them crouch around the corners until the next room was clear.

Because, you know, _whatever_ to all that.

...And also he’d needed to clear the area. The one they’d been too distracted with each other to clear themselves.

He wouldn’t have let them carry on without him _forever_. He just needed a bit of space from their _new vibe_ that he could only assume had meant they’d gotten physical at some point in the recent past. He’d briefly entertained the notion, thinking he’d be amused by the notion of such squishy figures engaging in intercourse; but then he’d been distracted by the thought of Shepard without clothing and appalled by the thought of Alenko also there, and so he’d dismissed the thought immediately and opted to hang back another moment. You know. To make sure the area was clear.

And now that they were back, it was giving him great joy to watch Alenko’s expression barely, but perceptibly, harden as Garrus and Shepard carried on.

“Open space behind us, Shepard,” he reminds her, indicating behind him with a nod of the head.

“The area was clear, Garrus,” she holds. “We’ve never kept our backs turned for long enough to get fooled.”

“Given that our heads are ahead of where they should be, if it was gonna happen, it would’ve happened today,” Garrus tells Shepard, and he’s distantly impressed with his own bullshit. 

To her credit, doubt flashes on her face before her features rearrange into neutral command. “Well. Alenko.” She turns her body away, but not her face. “Can you confirm the room is clear now?” she asks, staring at Garrus all the while.

“I can,” Alenko says, behind her.

“Do you need Alenko to remind you how to use your radar, Garrus?”

Alenko’s face lights up suddenly in the background, and Garrus’ expression darkens.

“No, Commander,” he says bitterly.

“Then if you don’t mind, let’s get a move on.” She beckons him forward with his weapon in a careless gesture that has him wincing, wondering how so much of the droopier human got so far into her system so quickly; and he falls in line behind Alenko, resigning himself to being the third wheel of the mission, the thought of shooting Saren in his traitorous turian skull propelling him forward and keeping their human chirping far from his mind.

\---  
\---

Kaidan opens his eyes.

He is alive.

He is alive and Saren is gone and the Citadel, he remembers now, collapsed over them. The walls had been crashing down and Kaidan had splayed himself out, looking for Shepard, incredibly making himself as big as possible in the midst of the chaos. It had been fucking foolish, but he was a fool, so that suited him down to the ground; only suddenly he registers that he never got to her, and looks frantically around the enclosure he finds himself in.

Only Garrus stares back, hunched over on his hands and knees and trying to force something out from his esophagus.

“Shepard?” Kaidan asks him. 

Garrus only shakes his head, apparently unable to speak.

Kaidan thrashes suddenly beneath the boulder pinned against his ribcage, miraculously propped against something, saving his life. “Shepard!” he shouts, as loudly as possible, ignoring the fact of the miracle that’s spared him, and immediately he inhales a stream of rock dust.

“Tried that,” Garrus croaks, voice even more striated than usual; and Kaidan hacks a solid minute before getting enough oxygen back to reply.

“Shepard,” he whispers again, at last. 

Garrus rolls his eyes.

“She can’t hear us,” he mutters. “Her transmitter busted in the battle, I remember getting hit with pieces of it. We’re covered in three feet of rock. If she’s still alive out there--”

“If?!” Kaidan croaks incredulously.

Garrus shuts his eyes tight. “ _If_ she’s still alive, she’s more likely going to find us than we are to find her.”

Kaidan frowns and slackens at that remark, struck by the thought that she might be trying to get to them under god knows how much debris. He recreates the scene in his mind: Shepard pointing, telling at them to go; him running as ordered until he looked back despite himself and saw her further back, too far behind to catch up; stumbling to a stop at the same time Sovereign had crashed into the Presidium.

“Did you see?” Kaidan asks Garrus suddenly. “What happened to her?”

Garrus looks at him sidelong, suspiciously, but then shuts his eyes again, as though scolding himself. “I reached for her, same as you,” he says slowly, deliberately. “But she--” He pauses, clears his throat again. “Wasn’t near.”

Kaidan stares, heart pounding. “Did you see the -- did you see it.”

Garrus pauses for long enough that Kaidan thinks he might’ve heard something, some trick of Turian hearing that he didn’t have; but then Garrus turns his head, slowly, and looks Kaidan dead in the eye with an expression he wasn’t sure he’d ever seen on his face before.

“Yeah,” he says slowly. “I saw it.”

Kaidan’s eyes close. “No.”

“It doesn’t mean--”

“You saw it.”

“--anything--”

“I saw it.”

“--come on, this is _Shepard_ \--”

“Doesn’t matter.” Kaidan’s throat tightens. “This is it. This is the mission. Only by some fluke, we survived. Us, Garrus. And Shepard--”

“Shut up,” Garrus hisses, and Kaidan blinks his surprise. “I refuse to believe in that outcome,” he barks, voice still grating.

Kaidan stares at him, stunned and sad and _angry_ , somehow, that Garrus Vakarian of all people could ever believe in anything so blindly. He blinks, emotion welling in his chest that he doesn’t have the control to beat back with feigned professionalism anymore; and he throws a hand over his face and tries to beat back an errant sob. “Jesus Christ, Garrus, how can you be so _naive_?” he shouts across the enclosure. “I loved her -- I _loved_ her -- and even I’m not that big of a fucking idiot! She _did not survive_! We both watched her crushed by that Reaper! There is no fucking chance! And now we have to live with that!” 

Some niggling voice in the back of his head reminds him that they may die here after all, of starvation or of rogue geth, or of parts of Sovereign for all he knows about what’s happening on the other side of their little scrap heap; but Garrus sighs, seemingly to get his own dispositions under control, and looks up at him with more sympathy than Kaidan had ever thought could’ve been possible as Kaidan forcefully, pointlessly, tries to lift the boulder off his chest using his biotic ability.

“Until we find her, Alenko, this battle isn’t over,” he says simply. Something gravels in Garrus’ voice, and he looks pathetic, Kaidan realizes, hunched over in place, refusing to lie down despite the close quarters. “I won’t mourn her having died for the cause until I know it to be true.”

Kaidan disengages from trying to lift the boulder and exhales shakily, clinging onto Garrus’ misguided hope as though it was his own. Suddenly, startlingly, something clicks, and Kaidan gets it, in a way. They’d always served side by side with Shepard, the two of them, never finding each other in tension, instead developing a surprisingly functional rhythm in backing her up or forging ahead with minimal communication. He gets now that they’d barely had to speak because they’d both been there not only _with_ her, but _for_ her, silently filling gaps by instinct on the basis of making sure the first human Spectre made it to Saren in one piece even if they didn’t; and they’d done it again here, turned in tandem to drag her away from the slab only to get stuck under another, together, both failed in their sole aim of keeping her alive, and taking Saren down in the process if they could manage it.

“Shepard!” Garrus shouts, his voice tearing at the edges; and Kaidan tenses suddenly, again pushing against the rock on his chest, overwhelmed.

“Fuck, Garrus, don’t,” he implores desperately. “She’s not there, man. She’s not out there.”

“She might think we’re dead too.” Garrus’ vocal chords are as though scraped from the edge of the rock, and Kaidan registers ‘ _too_ ’ like a knell, betraying the truth of Garrus’ belief more than the sentence itself.

But then Garrus shouts for her again.

And Kaidan joins him, until their voices run ragged.

\---  
\---

Shepard gains consciousness and hears muffled voices. Agitated voices, unfamiliar ones, and then one that she knows; but neither of them the ones she wants to hear.

Neither of them Kaidan or Garrus.

The reality of the day’s events hit her suddenly and in rapid succession.

She opens her eyes to see the remains of Reaper collapsed heavily on her left arm, and the pain shoots suddenly through it, as though looking at it brought it into being. She struggles with it briefly by hand, then reaches behind her for her shotgun, uses it as a fulcrum, levering the debris away from her until finally, excruciatingly, it rolls off.

It’s a few moments before she feels steady enough to get to her feet, and someone’s shouting without telling her who's been found or whether they’re dead or alive; and, haphazardly, she gets to scrambling over the wreckage. 

Someone on the other side asks where she is, and there’s some pointed silence, dread settling deep into the atmosphere, creeping into her lungs. She fears they died -- and why shouldn’t they have, under all of that -- and the lump in her throat prevents her from yelling out, from telling them she’s here. 

She thinks desperately, involuntarily, of Kaidan, and then tries to think desperately about anything else, without success; the debris gets, somehow, looser under her feet, and she struggles.

But then she gets there, climbs up over the top, holding her arm aloft in her haste as she straightens up; and there Kaidan is, giving her this look she hasn’t got the slightest clue what to do with. It’s more devastation than anything else, as though he was looking at her through the lens of the past; and it’s only as she levels on solid terrain some seconds later that she notices that Garrus is there too, off to the side and beaming at her like a man who’d won a bet. 

She reaches out to squeeze at his hand while the medic takes stock of her arm, forcing herself to look away from Kaidan.

“Good fight,” she tells him fondly.

“You too, Commander,” Garrus replies, and his voice is oddly distorted, but unmistakably glad.

She returns to stare at Kaidan who stares at her back, keeps his distance, his expression still tearful and impossible to decipher, neither of them saying anything. They stand still until she is told that her arm is broken but easily mended, and that Udina is waiting on the other side of the Citadel. 

So, with a final lingering look at Kaidan, she instructs the medics to take the lads to sick bay, glances a final time back at Garrus, and breaks through the stiffness in her legs as she follows Anderson out of the Presidium.

\---  
\---

It’s 23h40 before Kaidan shows up at Shepard’s quarters.

He takes a deep breath before she answers his knock, and when her lips quirk up as though pleased to see him, he’s already prepared his steady expression. “Hey,” he says passively, leaning in the doorway, crossing his arms.

Shepard looks suddenly pissed. 

“Is that all you got?” she asks brusquely after a moment, looking over the top of the pages in her hands.

“Uh … yeah?” He shrugs, again passively. “Did you expect something else?”

She lets the book fall onto her lap. “I expected more than fuck all, Alenko.”

“Sorry.” He shrugs again. He doesn’t feel sorry. He feels mostly angry that she’s being like this, like he’s the one who’s supposed to be pissed; and he feels something else, too, distant and tight in his gut.

She seems to pick up on his distance and shuts her eyes, breathing frustration out of her nostrils; and when she looks at him again, she seems to have another approach in mind altogether, as though her expectations are lower. “Are you all right?” she says, more softly.

He’s surprised by both this process and its outcome -- the way she can turn on a dime like that and become this concerned commanding officer with just that hint of intimacy that got him interested in the first place. “I, uh. Yeah? A few scrapes. One massive bruise on my chest, a few more on my legs. I was lucky, all things considered.”

She nods. “I’ll say. You want to come in or are you--”

“I’m fine here,” he says, too quickly.

“Okay.” She shrugs, too, crosses her arms, gives him a careful once-over. “What can I do for you?”

He takes a breath, meets her eye, and tries to convince himself that this is the right thing. “I’m here to request a transfer.”

Shepard frowns deeply. “You too?” She seems more concerned than surprised. “Garrus just requested one a few hours ago.”

“I know,” he says, and then purses his lips. “I mean, I ran into him. In the corridor. A couple hours ago.”

She looks at him with scrutiny, and he fights the urge to walk away. Shepard takes a moment to study him hard, and he wonders if she can see right through him, to crack away at his attempted professionalism, to get at the shit he was trying to put away. 

“Was this mission too much for you, Kaidan?” she asks eventually, and something in her tone hits him square in the chest.

“Not at all,” he says immediately; then lets his chin fall to his chest, mutters to the floor, “And in other respects, yes.” When he looks up again, his voice is clear, if still strained from the shouting. “I just think a change will be good for me.”

Shepard looks tiredly at him, idly moves her injured arm, surely by now healed but still tender. “Do you?” she says only.

He swallows, searches her eyes, doesn’t say anything.

“You want to hear what I think?”

 _No,_ he thinks. But he only stares.

“I think you got scared,” she continues, “and now you’re running.”

Control drops off him like defective armour. “I’m not--” he begins hotly, but then bows his head again. His fingers tense over his bicep. “I’m not _running_ ,” he says.

She stares at him again, then squares her shoulders, and _why_ does that always get him? “So what is your reason for requesting a transfer?” 

She’s his CO again, and he at once feels like he hasn’t got a leg to stand on. “I just think a change will be--”

“--good for you,” she finishes for him. “Right. I’d buy that like I’d buy Medi-gel for 4000 credits, which is to say, only if extremely drunk.”

Kaidan winces, despite himself. “Just -- will you consider it?”

She considers briefly, then says, “If that’s what you really want, it’s yours.”

He stares at her, and god help him, suddenly it’s the last thing on earth he wants. He needs more time. “You gave one to Garrus,” he says, slowly.

“Garrus signed on to take down Saren, and now we’ve done that,” she says simply. “He’s a good soldier, but C-Sec can use him more right now, to help rebuild. He didn’t request a transfer as much as take his leave.”

“But I’m not afforded the same privileges.”

“It’s just a different consideration.”

“Because I’m Alliance?” He knows he sounds bitter.

Shepard opens her mouth, then shuts it again. “I was going to say because we’ve been through more together, but sure. Because you’re Alliance.”

The knot in his stomach is growing, becoming liquid, and he clenches his jaw against incredulity and confusion. “Because we’ve been through more together,” he repeats, endeavoring to stay calm; but the effort fails, and his breathing is coming hard. “You say shit like this and I’m starting to wonder if I’ve been misinterpreting all of it this entire time. Did you even mean to fuck me?”

Her shoulders fall further onto her back, softening. “Kaidan.”

“Or was that just something you did as part of your last-night-alive make-work project?”

“Get in here.” Her voice is too kind.

“No,” he spits, now only angry; and unbelievably, she laughs her frustration.

“At least close the door, you jackass.”

He stares at her, feeling the flush creep up his neck and into his cheeks; then, slowly, he steps forward and lets the door slide shut behind him.

“You’re smirking again,” he says apropos of nothing when she doesn’t say anything, desperation edging into his tone for reasons unknown.

“Come here,” she insists.

“No,” he says again.

“Okay, well, standing offer.” She pauses. “There is a standing offer for you to come here, onto the bed, with me. All right? Does that help clarify anything?”

“Not really,” he says, and he knows he sounds sullen and too young.

Shepard, for her part, seems to suppress an eyeroll, but keeps looking at him anyway, her arms crossed to match his. She’s still in her regular civvies, legs stretched out and loosely crossed on the bed in front of her, and the conflict of tension and relaxation is catching him off-guard.

“So what do you want to know?” she asks, quietly.

He clenches his jaw, continues to lean against the nearest vertical surface, and feels the ache in his muscles. Half of it’s injury and half of it’s tension. He feels a migraine coming on and he thought that if he had a transfer out of this entire situation then maybe he’d be able to relax -- maybe he could stop feeling like he was still trapped under a boulder and shouting after Shepard without receiving a reply. But Shepard’s staring at him like he’s _normal_ , like he hasn’t got splinters in his brain and a guilt complex the size of the Normandy and like he still doesn’t somehow think that if anyone had been almost crushed by a collapsing structure, it should’ve been him.

“Garrus says … you care. About me.”

The statement seems to roll over her in increments, and her head tilts slowly to the side. The smirk is back, but now inscrutable. “ _Garrus_ says,” she repeats.

“But you don’t.”

“I don’t care about you?” she counters immediately, defensive.

“You don’t _say._ ”

Something is happening on her face, like she’s trying too hard not to smile; but it bursts through anyway, and she hides her face against her shoulder until she’s replaced it with a smirk again. “I do, you know,” she tells him, head still partially bowed, looking up at him through her lashes. “Care about you.”

A muscle in his arm twitches involuntarily; his breath still comes to him in short bursts; he can’t look away.

“Come here,” she requests again.

“ _No_ ,” and this time it’s a whisper.

“Kaidan.”

“I thought you were dead!”

Every muscle in her body goes lax, and the shouted words hover between them, stagnant. “There’s that expression again,” she says, tilting her head, watching him.

“What expression.”

“That one. When I saw -- when you saw me, earlier today, and here again now. There’s no joy in it, Kaidan. It’s like you see me alive and feel only pain.”

“No,” he says again. “Of course not. I just--” He sighs, shifts uncomfortably. “It’s sorrow, Shepard. I’m sorry that I didn’t get to you. I’m sorry that I … failed you. In that way.”

She scoffs in sudden laughter, and anger bubbles in him again. “Fuck that, Kaidan.”

“I -- what?”

“Who’s in command of this unit?”

“You are.”

“And what order did I issue?”

“To run.”

“And what did you do?”

“I fucking _ran_.” The guilt racks through him, reverberates in his chest and in his voice.

“And then you -- stopped. You and Garrus both did.” She shakes her head. “If anyone failed anyone, it was I who failed you. For making you believe one of us was worth saving more than any other. For allowing some primacy to be established in the unit.”

“You’re the Commander.”

“Do you think for a second I give a shit about that? Have any of my actions -- here, with you -- indicated that rank means a goddamn thing to me?” She gives another joyless laugh, the air breaking from her lungs through more of a grimace. “And that’s my mistake. Neither of you followed my orders because I didn’t respect hierarchy enough. It’s my fault you’re injured.”

“No,” Kaidan says immediately.

“Right?” She smiles suddenly. “So we’re both fools.”

She looks at him hopefully; he stares at her, still at a loss for what to say.

“We signed up for everything we got in that mission and more,” she tells him, after a moment. “Including the baseless feelings of guilt we each knew we’d feel if the other got killed.”

Finally he tears his gaze away. “I know.”

“You know what else we signed up for? Nothing changing. Focusing on the mission. Keeping professional.”

He shuts his eyes tight. “I remember.” But then he looks at her and she’s looking away, massaging her arm, trying to coax the pain away. “But you almost died,” he repeated, slowly, as calmly as he was able, “and you _still_ didn’t say.”

Her head turns slightly toward him, but still she focuses on her arm. “I thought--” She cuts herself off, shuts her eyes, and finally looks at him, sidelong. “Neither did you,” she says simply. “I thought we were on the same page with that.”

Kaidan sees her doing this, acting this way, and that tells him as much as each time they almost kissed did -- that she’s into this, that she’s prepared for this, that she’s not going to suddenly going to leave him and go to Garrus, who is far more disciplined than he. But doubt still unfolds within him, even as he watches her pretend not to be blushing, a hand patting at her hair while the other lies listless in her lap. So he disregards all the shitty complaints and confused remarks and opts only for a question, weighted heavily and still making him want to slide the door open and step right back out the other side: 

“Would you have wanted me to?”

She smiles, looks down, before catching his eye again. “Do me a favour and think about something for a second. When I climbed over that pile of debris, Kaidan, and you were looking at me -- was I looking at you?”

And for all the time he’d spent playing those moments over in his head for the last eight hours, for the level of detail he’d committed to memory -- the rise of her shoulders, the tell of her exhausted stagger, the bend of her broken arm -- he had never once noticed that she had held his gaze in every moment she could spare … as though barely believing he was alive, either.

He slides a hand over his mouth, and stares.

“Come here, Kaidan,” she asks again, voice low.

A moment passes, and then he shakes his head, slowly, haltingly, the hand finally dropping to fold back into the crook in his arm as he swallows. “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he says, voice low.

“In that case, can I assume you’re not still asking for a transfer?”

He shakes his head again, just slightly. “No.” Then his gaze drops. “But the unit comes first, now. I have to do a better job.”

A beat passes. “You did a fine job.”

“I wasn’t in it, Shepard.”

“You were.”

“I don’t think you understand.”

“Come _here._ ”

“I _can’t,_ ” he insists, and actively hates the words coming out of your mouth. “I can’t be with you and in your unit at the same time, Shepard. I can’t do both at once, because I -- care about you, more than I have a grip on.” Shepard is looking at him more directly than she has since crawling over the heap of debris, and he grips at himself for support. “I lost the thread. I couldn’t focus on anything but you. I disobeyed an order to get to you, and I didn’t even succeed at that. This can’t -- work. Given the choice, I’d rather be under your command than in your bed.”

She nods, slightly at first, then more pronounced, some distant smile on her face showing the sorrow of her comprehension. “Okay,” she says. “I understand. Completely.”

He wonders if he should apologize, because he _is_ sorry. He is so, so, very fucking sorry. But as he opens his mouth to do it, he wonders if Shepard won’t crucify him for it, the same way he did when he tried to claim that her injury was his fault; and he’s not sure he can take that, now, so he closes his mouth and stays quiet.

“I should go, then,” he says eventually.

“Hang on,” she replies, suddenly moving the book off her lap and engaging her stiff muscles as she shifts off the bed. “This is going to sound weird, now, but as your commanding officer I’d … like to see your chest.”

He blinks, because that _does_ sound weird, but the ache as he inhales reminds him of why, and he gives a real smile for what’s certainly the first time all day. “Because of my injury,” he clarifies.

“Yes,” she agrees, smiling too, stopping too far away and splaying her arms to the side as though to indicate that she didn’t know how to go about this nonsexually. At last she steps forward, keeping a foot of distance between them, two fingers lifting his shirt away from his skin before trying, awkwardly, to push it over his ribs; and he laughs at the absurdity of it, bows his head as the emotion suddenly shifts sideways into that feeling he can’t take, clenches his jaw against it as the fabric of his shirt slips slowly higher.

Shepard’s eye snaps up to him, and he catches it, startled by the abruptness of the motion. “Jesus Christ, Kaidan,” she says harshly; then all care to distance disappears as her hand moves to trace over the edges of the considerable bruise, spreading wide and purple over his ribs. “Why aren’t you in sickbay?”

“It’s just a bruise, Shepard,” he says.

“Bruised _ribs_ , Kaidan!”

“I … guess that is more significant.”

“What caused this?” She’s struggling between stepping forward and stepping back, and he resists the urge to reach out.

“Woke up pinned to the ground by a boulder. Lucky part of it was propped up or I’d’ve been a goner for sure.”

Both hands brace themselves over his chest, his shirt abandoned and left to slide over her forearms, and the look she gives him is strikingly terrified, her body swaying suddenly with the force of her heartbeat. 

“You came that close?” she whispers, and he realizes she’d never seen him on the ground, only later when he was standing erect and too elated at seeing her breaking over the ridge to remember he’d been injured, too. Her expression is too honest and too full, and she’s alive, too; and his hands move to her face almost of their own accord, cupping her jaw, fingers perching in the slant of her neck.

“We’re okay,” he reminders her. Through some sheer force of will their foreheads are pressed together, as though to remind themselves that the other’s still warm, and her palms run, calloused, over his ribs, stopping short of where the bruise begins and running back toward his spine. 

It’s two breaths later before they find each others mouths, kissing tight and angry until she pulls his shirt over his head. Her arms weave themselves around his neck and he leans in, deepens the kiss, breath a lesser priority than touch; and suddenly he’s wholly committed to familiarizing himself with as much of her as he can, given that she’s alive and so is he, in case he never has a chance to do so again.

“Suspension of decision re: fucking each other on grounds of mutual near-death experiences,” she suggests, breathy as she walks backward, tugging him after her, clearly not waiting for his word.

“Agreed,” he says anyway, hands shaking as they work to pull each other’s clothes off, heart pounding near out of his chest as she pulls him overtop of her onto the bed. 

If he’s thought about this moment and also about preventing it all day, the latter element matters suddenly so much less than the warmth of her skin beneath his fingers; and god _fucking_ damn his alleged morals, because for the first time all day he feels the weight lifting from his chest, even if his throat still burns from shouting her name. 

\---

He shifts against her, and it’s clear she’s awake.

“Do you ever sleep?” he rumbles against her neck.

She seems to laugh, her hand finding his thigh behind her. “It seems not.”

“Might want to reconsider your stance,” he says. “I heard you had a long day.”

She pauses only a moment before blurting in reply, “You want to reconsider that transfer?” Though her voice is quiet, there’s tension in it, thick and afraid of every answer he could give; and her fingers curl over his leg in betrayal of her objectivity.

“Finding it hard to answer that question right now,” he admits, pressing his lips behind her ear.

She nods, as though understanding. “What you said made sense, Kaidan. In many ways I agree with you; sometimes we might lose sight of the mission.”

The unstated premise is there, but halted by the fact of her rank: she can’t suggest to him that they try anyway, because then it could be construed as an order. And there’s that feeling again, the one that Kaidan can’t take, the one that left him shouting on the Normandy and crouching in place for no reason and yelling at Garrus in the middle of a predicament all in the last 24 hours -- but this time Shepard’s right here, he can touch her, and neither one of them’s in any danger. They’re just trying to feel their way out of another tricky situation, but this time the battle is different, internal, and -- god help them -- carnal; and goddamn it if they aren’t going to face this struggle side by side, same as any other, whether they’re intending to sleep together or not.

“We could try, Shepard,” he says suddenly; and she seems to stiffen with surprise. He tightens his arms around her, the slope of her back pressing close against his chest, warmth and anxiety crashing off her in equal measure, his hand settling over her breast to keep her near. “God knows I want to. I just don’t know what happens when we _do_ lose sight of it.” He presses long, chaste kisses along the slope of her neck, onto these shoulders that cause him so much anguish; traces the line back to her neck again. “Maybe we’ll never find out. But we may as well see.”

He can’t see her face but she seems relieved at that; the blades of her shoulders relax against him, and he thinks he could probably handle being here forever. 

“It’s never an order, Alenko,” she mutters.

“I know,” he assures her, settling in as close as he can manage. “Believe me, Shepard, I know.”

\---  
\---

Garrus passes Alenko’s empty quarters on his way out of the Normandy, fleetingly imagines them squishing again, and makes a note to himself to try not to start hating humans arbitrarily in his next posting on this basis alone.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is the result of a comic storyboard I sketched out after thinking out about six pages worth in the shower after I played Ilos in ME1. My game is glitchy as all hell, and the glitches sometimes came together to make a plot. Kaidan crouches defensively behind absolutely nothing for no reason when not in combat and has a hard time figuring out how to get out of it. Apart from being hilarious and annoying this seems like a really solid potential character bit. Sometimes he’s just so overwhelmed by how great Shepard is that he just needs to sit down!! Poor lad. I just kind of want to bake him cookies all the time, if only to hush him up.
> 
> For some reason, too, whenever Garrus is in my party he refuses to follow me and gets stuck in the first room of any course. It’s not because he’s crouching arbitrarily but more just because the terrain is too tricky for him in specific. Can’t figure that out -- Kaidan generally follows me like a puppy -- so I figured it was obviously because The Humans Were Too Annoying and he just wanted some space. Only there was comedic potential there, and I can’t draw, so here we are.
> 
> At time of writing I had only played ME1. I know more now [stares directly at camera and mouths 'Horizon' with a devastated expression] but nevertheless stand by the fic. I altered one detail upon replying ME1 (March 22/14) as I noticed I had misremembered parts of the closing cutscene, but no characterization has changed. 
> 
> I now understand why y'all were laughing at me in the comments. XD Bless. He _can_ be easy to get along with!! You just have to, you know, dump water over his head, or reward good behavior with cake, or something.


End file.
